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Galactic Starfighter (GSF) Suggestions


myrrhbear

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Quoted from depeshmood from answers.ea.com upon his request

 

"I am currently not a subscriber to Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR); however, I am hopeful that the developers will see this and might take these suggestions for Galactic Starfighter (GSF) into account.

 

 

 

What I hope to achieve with these suggestions is a shorter queue time for GSF, more balanced matches and match durations that are more on par with the number of players in each match. These suggestions are based on my experience in GSF matches and/or doing Warzones as well.

 

 

 

SCALING MATCHES

 

There would be 3 different tiered timers for matches. This should make the matches take approximately the same amount of time, based on the number of players in each match, similar to a Warzone deathmatch.

 

Deathmatch

 

Currently a deathmatch has a maximum of 50 kills per team and a maximum of 10 minutes for the match.

 

My suggestion is as follows...

 

Teams with a maximum of 4 players would have a maximum of 16 kills per team to complete the match and the timer would be a maximum of 4 minutes.

 

Teams with a maximum of 8 players would have a maximum of 35 kills per team to complete the match and the timer would be a maximum of 8 minutes.

 

Teams with a maximum of 12 players would have a maximum of 50 kills per team to complete the match and the timer would be a maximum of 10 minutes.

 

Domination

 

Teams with a maximum of 4 players would need to reach a score of 350 points to win the match.

 

Teams with a maximum of 8 players would need to reach a score of 700 points to win the match.

 

Teams with a maximum of 12 players would need to reach a score of 1,000 points to win the match.

 

Rewards

 

The various mission rewards would be adjusted based on the maximum number of players in the match, in three tiers. Basically, a maximum team of 4 would receive around 1/3 of the current mission rewards.

 

 

 

MATCHMAKING

 

Once a second player has queued for a GSF match there is a maximum of a 5 minute timer. If there are no additional players that queue during that time, then the two players would be put into a deathmatch. If at least 8 players queue during that time, then the match would be either a deathmatch or domination.

 

As players queue for GSF they would be matched to any in-progress match and the objective, as described above, and/or timer would be adjusted accordingly once they enter. Basically, if there are currently 2 groups of 4 players and two more players queue, then they would be able to join the in-progress match, using the scaling option(s).

 

 

 

QUEUEING or ELITE VS NON-ELITE

 

This coincides with “matchmaking”, but I feel deserves its own section to help illustrate how this would work.

 

Non-Grouped Queue

 

Players that queue individually are placed into one queue and those that queue as a group would be placed into their own queue. This would allow the current in-game matchmaking to better utilize a player’s rank to match groups together. I have seen too many times where a group of players dominate a match and do not give the other team much of a chance to last more than 30 seconds.

 

Grouped Queue

 

Players that queue as a group would be paired only with others in a group. If there is a group of 4 that is queued and a group of 2, then the queue would wait until there is second group that queues. I really cannot explain the nuances of how this would work, as it is something that the devs would need to work out on their own. The primary objective of group queueing is to remove those players that completely obliterate new players and/or experienced players that are working on new characters. This would put these more “elite” players into their own matches where they could truly test their piloting abilities against others.

 

 

 

Please note: I tried using the tools to indent this to make it more easy to follow; however, I was given a message that I had invalid HTML and it was removed, so I used spaces in place of the indent."

Edited by myrrhbear
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Speaking for myself now - not quoting for my friend:

 

I think that the issues that depeshmood is trying to address here are ones that do really need some attention and I'm grateful that he took the time to present some suggestions and open up this discussion.

 

GSF is one of my favorite parts of SWTOR. It has a lot of potential but it has some glaring issues at present.

 

1. The amount of time that queues take to pop is an obvious drawback. During off peak hours it seems like hours can pass without a single queue. Perhaps allowing for smaller matches during those times of day would make it so GSF queues would still be available to enjoy. It seems like something worth trying.

 

2. Groups of highly ranked pilots queuing as a team is really game breaking. I am personally a quite strong pilot in GSF ending up consistently in the top 2 or 3 on most matches I'm in. However whenever a team of 3 or more strong pilots queue as a group it for all intents and purposes kills GSF until they get bored and quit queing for the night. A group of strong pilots queued as a team totally throws off any semblance of balance, and their team almost invariably will totally decimate the other team to the point to which many pilots will simply stop engaging during the match. After a couple of matches like that people simply stop queuing, since it's really no fun to play GSF at those time, so GSF is not available for anyone for a while until the elite group stops queing for the night. It's really a big problem, and comes up fairly frequently.

 

I've tried discussing this with the people forming those groups but the response I got was a sense of entitlement to do as they please, since it's fun for them, and a sense of annoyance as the suggestion they please queue individually, since they see this as an unfair imposition upon them. They have said back to me that it's basically my problem if I don't like it, and that I am always free to form my own group. To me this does not seem like a valid solution.

 

The majority of players are not as strong in GSF as these elite pilots and even if they would want to form a group to try to make it a fair fight, a group of novices simply can't balance out a group of elite pilots.

 

But even for strong pilots like myself, if I would want to find a group to try to balance the match it's not like I can find several other strong pilots 24/7 whenever I am in the mood for GSF and an elite group happens at that time to decide to start queing. It's just not feasible in any realistic way. Before the elite group starts queing you have a decent chance of the game mechanic for balancing GSF functioning as intended, and the matches are often close and fair and exciting. Then a group of elite pilots comes in, and immediately you get landslide matches one after the other, making it anything but fun to continue.

 

If those elite pilots would simply queue solo then the game mechanics would be able to try to balance the two teams, and the match would become more fair and fun for everyone. This is really to the benefit of everyone. Fair and balanced matches mean that novice players can enjoy the game without getting steamrolled, while elite players are faced with a proper opponent and challenge to their skills. The only people who lose out are those who were getting their fun specifically out of breaking the balancing mechanic, and therefore massively overpowering whatever pick up group of novices they are against.

 

Balance in PvP shouldn't really need to be defended as an idea. It's the basic requirement of PvP. That's why a system was introduced to GSF to try to assess pilot skills levels and to divide the teams so each side is equally strong. These elite groups simply break that balancing function.

 

Therefore my suggestion for a solution would be:

 

- Implement a change to GSF queing and team balancing mechanics so that if 3 or more people queue as a group, the game automatically places the highest ranked of those 3 on the opposing team, even though they queued as a group. If 4 people queue together, 2 should be placed on each team to balance the teams. If 5 queue together the strongest pilot is placed in a group of 2 on one team, and the other 3 players are placed on the other team, etc... This way you can have regular queues, and people who are grouped with their friends doing other content can queue for GSF, but if they are all strong pilots then they will be split up for the duration of the GSF match, allowing the match to be better balanced.

 

- As an aside to this perhaps there could be once a month tournament nights on GSF where elite pilots are invited to queue as a group, and the group splitting mechanic will be turned off for the night so that elite groups can go in as a team, and battle against other elite teams. Alternatively there could be ranked GSF queues that are separate from the normal GSF queues. The downside of that though is that it removes pilots from the general GSF queue, and reduces the frequency of queues for everyone. That's why I think we're better off keeping everyone in one GSF queue, but dividing teams so that there is better balance.

Edited by myrrhbear
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Therefore my suggestion for a solution would be:

 

- Implement a change to GSF queing and team balancing mechanics so that if 3 or more people queue as a group, the game automatically places the highest ranked of those 3 on the opposing team, even though they queued as a group. If 4 people queue together, 2 should be placed on each team to balance the teams. If 5 queue together the strongest pilot is placed in a group of 2 on one team, and the other 3 players are placed on the other team, etc... This way you can have regular queues, and people who are grouped with their friends doing other content can queue for GSF, but if they are all strong pilots then they will be split up for the duration of the GSF match, allowing the match to be better balanced.

 

- As an aside to this perhaps there could be once a month tournament nights on GSF where elite pilots are invited to queue as a group, and the group splitting mechanic will be turned off for the night so that elite groups can go in as a team, and battle against other elite teams. Alternatively there could be ranked GSF queues that are separate from the normal GSF queues. The downside of that though is that it removes pilots from the general GSF queue, and reduces the frequency of queues for everyone. That's why I think we're better off keeping everyone in one GSF queue, but dividing teams so that there is better balance.

 

Your entire assertion here is based on faulty logic - namely that there is an effective ranking mechanic for the matchmaker to draw from. The matchmaker looks at matches played across legacy and once that cap is reached, all players are equal. Everything you suggest is ineffective because of this design flaw. It results in the horribly mismatched games you are complaining about, because players reach that max games cap hiding on bombers or finishing games against new players in the top 2-3 and thinking that they are "strong" while learning bad habits in the process. We've tried to make this matchmaker work with offset queues, alternating groups, and many other variations to get "even" results, and it essentially boils down to RNG. The only effective method of creating balanced matches is the custom lobby, because it puts a person in the loop. Anything else that you've experienced that seemed "balanced" was the result of chance or simply no stand-out pilots to offset the match.

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Your entire assertion here is based on faulty logic - namely that there is an effective ranking mechanic for the matchmaker to draw from.

 

Sure, he's wrong about that, but that's the bone you're gonna pick? Like man, you got served a hot fudge sundae and really started picking out the sprinkles to eat separately, you know?

 

GSF is one of my favorite parts of SWTOR

 

Is it? Every interaction I have had with you has been:

1)- You complaining in ops chat

2)- You complaining in /1 or insulting teams

3)- You complaining in gsf chat

4)- You complaining in the gsf discord

 

I've never heard you say anything like:

"Hey guys, lets form a team and win!"

"Lets talk about ships!"

"Lets talk about strategy!"

"Here's a thing I like about GSF"

 

Except for this post, where you claim it's one of your favorite parts of SWTOR. Well, I hope I never have to read about all the other parts of SWTOR that you like less, is all I can say.

 

1. The amount of time that queues take to pop is an obvious drawback.

 

 

Queue length and games at a given time are generally a result of total SWTOR population. During prime time, there are usually multiple games going on Star Forge. I bet the expansion repairs queue times for awhile, but, we'll see.

 

Could the game offer a mode with less players? It could, but it would be a great deal of effort to make it work right, and ship balance would be messed up, and more difficult to balance. With a 5 ship hangar it's possible to have 6s without too much adjustment, but 4s is a different universe. I don't know if the problem during the rest of the day is "the game doesn't pop 4s".

 

Groups of highly ranked pilots queuing as a team is really game breaking

 

Ah, here we are. "I won't or can't group: therefore, no one else should be able to, because teams working together in a team game have an advantage that I do not.". Dude, maybe I missed it, but I've never even seen you try to pull a team together. Also, lets look at "game breaking". Is that just another way of saying "I can't win if I go against a team in a team game"? Because that's not a broken game.

 

I am personally a quite strong pilot in GSF

 

You should have no problems pulling together a solid team then. The GSF Discord is ok for that, but I have a groupfinder Discord as well.

 

ending up consistently in the top 2 or 3

 

The map is not the territory, and the scoreboard is not a ranking system.

 

A group of strong pilots queued as a team totally throws off any semblance of balance

 

Wait, the game is unbalanced? I mean, the grouped up team in voice tends to win, right? The team with the better pilots tends to win, right? How is that unbalanced? That sounds like balance. That is definitely game balance, right there. Why should you be able to beat four other players working together?

 

After a couple of matches like that people simply stop queuing

 

This doesn't make the queue stop popping. It does make people go on the forum and claim that it makes the queue stop popping, which has been claimed about GSF since the start, SWTOR warzones since launch, and many other games since the 90s. You would think no one ever queues any game in history, with all these people who simply stop queueing.

 

It's really a big problem, and comes up fairly frequently

 

The "really big problem" is that you can't win during a time when a team is playing? And of course you can't or won't make your own team and talk in voice even in the era of Discord, so your solution is to ask the devs to stop allowing teams to play a team game because you don't like teams. We should all be punished for playing the game, to the benefit of you. Who, of course speak for everyone, just like every post on every forum about every game. I swear someone is gonna find some heiroglyphs that translate to some guy complaining he can't win at pyramid antigravity spaceball because he can't beat an entire team on his own.

 

I've tried discussing this with the people forming those groups but the response I got was a sense of entitlement to do as they please

 

AKA queue and play the game fairly and as designed, as a team, playing a team game, together. That's entitlement. Not your assumption that we should be barred from playing so that you don't have to worry about teamwork or making a team and learning how your wingmen fly. You exist, so everything should cater to you. I'm glad you are here to tell us about entitlement; otherwise I may have come to a different conclusion!

 

since it's fun for them

 

Correct. This is correct, playing as a team is fun.

 

and a sense of annoyance as the suggestion they please queue individually

 

I feel we would win less if we did this. Why should we win less? Why can't you form a team to play the team game?

 

They have said back to me that it's basically my problem if I don't like it

 

I only said this because it's your problem if you don't like it.

 

and that I am always free to form my own group

 

I only said this because you are always free to form your own group.

 

To me this does not seem like a valid solution.

 

I wasn't trying to solve your problems. That's not my job.

But it is a valid solution. It's a team game. The game makes this obvious at every step. Peeling for allies is the core mechanic in a flight game. Teamwork is the core mechanic in ANY team game.

 

The majority of players are not as strong in GSF as these elite pilots and even if they would want to form a group to try to make it a fair fight, a group of novices simply can't balance out a group of elite pilots.

 

A group of novices would do massively better than a bunch of individuals who refuse to hop in voice in any of the well populated Discords available for precisely this purpose. And you wanna know a secret? Even with SWTOR at low population, we still get games versus other premades.

 

Now, back to Wildtee's statement: the matchmaker actually is partly to blame here, because while matchmaker is pretty ok at putting two groups on opposite sides, it happens less often than you would assume, and it seems to group all pilots into the same bucket, without much idea about skill. It's definitely less sophisticated than the warzone battle maker. It is good at taking actually new pilots and putting them on the team with stronger pilots, often enough that it is actually doing something on this dimension, but most pilots don't count as actually new. You improve a ton in your first hundred games, and anyone who hasn't hit that mark yet tends to land on the team with the veteran pilots a lot. So that part is working as intended.

 

But if you aren't grouped up, you aren't even helping the matchmaker's limited power.

 

it's not like I can find several other strong pilots 24/7 whenever I am in the mood for GSF

 

Bro, nobody can do that. That's why we plan times to play GSF ahead of time. Getting a team together isn't some magical thing other people put no effort into. GSF chat, the GSF Discord, and the Groupfinder Discord can all help if you are looking, you know. But you appear to use these as social media sounding boxes or something.

 

f those elite pilots would simply queue solo then the game mechanics would be able to try to balance the two teams, and the match would become more fair and fun for everyone

 

This is a pvp game. Teaming up, along with being totally radical, also helps you win more. I don't queue up "to balance the two teams", I queue up to shoot red ships into atoms with plasma bolts in all the colors of the rainbow.

 

Therefore my suggestion for a solution would be:

 

"Stop other people from beating me by deleting their ability to play together and ruining the game for the players who play it as designed to cater to my needs and my desires and my whims, and do it now, and anyone who disagrees with me is mean and should feel bad for trying to win in pvp, when everyone knows I'm the only one that should win in pvp and all strategy, teamwork, and design should be thrown out for my sake immediately"

 

Or however you have phrased it, that's the gist of it. A familiar refrain indeed.

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Sure, he's wrong about that, but that's the bone you're gonna pick? Like man, you got served a hot fudge sundae and really started picking out the sprinkles to eat separately, you know?

 

 

 

 

I mean not all of us can dedicate the time and expertise to this level of forum pvp, sir ;)

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A few years ago there was a bug that had crept into the live servers, where basically if players were grouped they weren’t getting ground warzone queue pops. It didn’t warrant a hotfix, I guess, because it took a week for it to be fixed. My anecdotal experience during that time was that my win/loss percentage was much closer to 50/50 and 8v8 ground warzones popped much faster and more often.

 

For the record, I think it’s bad design to prevent players from grouping together, in an MMO.

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I spent two hours talking to you about this already, so I'm not going to waste my time typing out the same points again. You're still saying the same things.

 

For anyone who wants to read our full conversation, here it is: https://pastebin.com/FyMUWHQ0

 

Here's a summary of my stance on the issue:

 

Groups are fine. There is a matchmaking problem where there aren't enough comparable groups or players of similar skill to put against the groups. This could be addressed with better matchmaking, since number of games played is a silly metric that doesn't tell you very much at all about how good a player is. Mastered vs not is even less useful, especially with requisition being so easy to come by.

 

Playing with your friends in an MMO is never wrong.

 

I agree that there is a matchmaking problem, but I see it as Bioware's problem to fix; it's not up to the players. Telling people not to group because it's too hard to beat them if they do is just like telling someone not to play because they're so much better than the randoms that it's not fair if they do.

 

Same argument, different application of it.

 

Your fun isn't the other team's responsibility. I don't like to solo queue against groups. So I... don't. It's a really easy solution.

 

Edited to add: There is a reason that matchmaker puts you into a group. It's because the game is intended to be played by a group. You just decide whether or not you want to pick who is part of that group.

Edited by DakhathKilrathi
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Honestly the level of ad hominem hostility being directed at me in this discussion is really disturbing.

 

I simply made the request that people be mindful and respectful of others in GSF. If you know you are strong pilots and you queue as a group, and you wipe the floor with the opposing team repeatedly, it is game breaking for everyone else. GSF, as all PvP, necessitates some approximation of balance. The devs implemented an attempt to create more balanced matches by ranking pilots, and having them automatically separated and sorted to the two teams according to skill. This only seems to function when people queue individually. However when people queue as a group together, all balance is lost. Perhaps this is in part because the current mechanic can't adjust for the significant increase in effectiveness that occurs when people who are skilled work as a team, with voice communication between them. Whether that's part of it or not, the fact remains that GSF becomes basically unplayable during the periods when groups of expert pilots queue together as a team.

 

My request of my fellow players is some consideration for the balance, and simply to please, if you notice after a couple of matches that you are clearly destroying the balance, to by all means keep queing and enjoying the game, but queue individually so that the game has a chance to balance the two teams.

 

The suggestion that was aimed at me, that I should just find a group of my own if I don't like it, doesn't seem realistic. On the drop of a hat, at any random time when a group of 4 elite pilots happens to form a team and start queuing, I'm not suddenly going to be able to find an equal number of basically equally skilled pilots to form a second team. I don't have the metrics available that the game's internal mechanic has for sorting pilots according to skill level, and finding several top notch pilots at a moment's notice just because another group has formed, is often not going to be available.

 

If you enjoy a challenge and respect the need for balanced teams in PvP, as in any fair competition, and if you are sure there are more pilots of equal or comparable skill available and interested in queing at that time... then you could actually form both teams, and make it a proper and fair competition. If you can't however find more people of similar skill who want to do GSF at that time, then telling the other people that it's their fault for not finding and making their own team is obviously ruled out. So if there aren't more people who want to form a second team then instead of wrecking the game for everyone else you could split your current team of 4 , for example, into two teams of 2, still allowing a chance that the GSF teams can be balanced, and fun for everyone.

 

Refusing to queue in a way that allows for a fair fight, and balanced teams, and good matches that are fun for everyone who is queing, is at best poor sportsmanship. Insisting that it's not your problem but the problem of the other players, and putting the obligation on them to find a second group of comparably strong pilots so the match can return to being balanced is not going to be practically feasible much of the time, even if they would try.

 

Until such time as our developers find a way to mitigate this imbalance through an internal mechanic, the best I can do is ask my fellow pilots to choose, of their own good will, to be considerate, and to try to be part of the solution for keeping the matches balanced and fun for everyone who is trying to enjoy GSF.

Edited by myrrhbear
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Quoting from depeshmood from answers.ea.com, upon his personal request that I share his post here for him:

 

"Since part of my ideas in myrrhbear's original post for this thread pertain to matchmaking, and there is quite a bit of, umm, discussion for grouping, here are my idea for a player's ranking, that could be used for the matchmaking process in GSF.

 

 

 

1. Each player starts out, by default, at rank zero and goes up to 1,000. Each match completed, whether win or lose, adds 1 point to this rank and this number is used for the account.

 

2. When a player is queued for a match, their highest ranked ship in their hangar is used for the second part of their rank in matchmaking. See "Ship Hangar Ranking" for details.

 

3. (Optional, based on solo or group queuing) The third, possible, part for their rank is if they are in a group. My suggestion is to add 50 points to each player in a group for each additional player they're grouped with. See "Group Points" for details.

 

 

 

Ship Hangar Ranking

 

My suggestion for ranking the ships would be to give 100 points maximum per component and it starts at zero, when no upgrades have been applied. If the component has 3 upgrades then 1 upgrade would add 30 points to the player's rank.

 

 

 

Group Points

 

To elaborate on my suggestion for groups, when 2 players are grouped and queue as a group, then their group as a whole would have 100 additional points, whereas a group with 4 players in the group would have 600 additional points for the entire group, or 150 points additional each.

 

My reasoning for these additional points applied to the group is to take into account that they have more than likely flown together on a few occasions and have a good synergy. They might also have some form of VoIP that allows them to talk and communicate their current and fluid strategy(ies).

 

 

 

I am hopeful that those of us as a player base can come up with constructive ideas on how to better one aspect of our enjoyment that we derive from SWTOR, which is Galactic Starfighter!"

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I'm going to repeat the very last point in my previous post, since you didn't (and haven't) address(ed) it:

 

GSF is a group game. You decide whether or not you want to choose who is in your group. You don't have to, but you will be in a group regardless. Matchmaking is essentially RNG, so even if what you are suggesting was reasonable (and it's not), it wouldn't work.

 

 

To the second post: The idea that games played or components mastered means anything at all about a player's skill or ability is, frankly, absurd. As mentioned previously. The game already does what you're suggesting, though probably in a way that's better implemented. It still doesn't work because those are silly metrics.

 

I am hopeful that those of us as a player base can come up with constructive ideas on how to better one aspect of our enjoyment that we derive from SWTOR, which is Galactic Starfighter!"

 

We have suggested an idea for that, that we as players can implement: we can form groups! It's pretty easy, and makes up for bad matchmaking.

 

Notable: I say this as a dedicated and stubborn solo player. I wish solo was less frustrating, but I don't blame the groups for this problem.

Edited by DakhathKilrathi
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Honestly the level of ad hominem hostility being directed at me in this discussion is really disturbing.

 

It's not an ad hominem attack. No one is avoiding discussing your points- everyone has explained why your givens are wrong and your conclusions are wrong. The separate facts (that you lost, claimed you were better than other players in 1v1 (irrelevant and wrong), had that proven in a 1v1, posted salt in /ops, /gsf, the GSF Discord, then cried to Dakhath for literally hours, and now are here on the forums carrying on without addressing any of the things that have been discussed) are all relevant as well.

 

I simply made the request that people be mindful and respectful of others in GSF.

 

NO, you did nothing this simple. Do you see why the facts are important? You didn't "simply request" anything, you flooded all chat forums available to you with salt, challenged a 1v1 (an irrelevant thing, btw), were indulged in this and got absolutely massacred, went to Discord, and went to forums, where you are currently begging the devs to make it so that groups can't queue and can't play because you want to win more in pvp and believe that changing the game would result in this. You want the entire game to be remade for you.

 

To this point, however, beating you in a pvp isn't a lack of mindfulness or respect, winning pvp matches is literally the point of pvp matches.

 

If you know you are strong pilots and you queue as a group, and you wipe the floor with the opposing team repeatedly, it is game breaking for everyone else.

 

Nothing about this is game breaking though. GSF is a team game, 8v8 or 12v12, and the stronger team wins almost all of the time. What's game breaking about that occurring?

 

The devs implemented an attempt to create more balanced matches by ranking pilots, and having them automatically separated and sorted to the two teams according to skill.

 

Actually no, they set them up according to experience, not skill. And said experience reviews your stuff account-wide (or at least server-wide per account). And this counts your most "experienced" pilot in group as if everyone in the group were that pilot.

 

It is very much not according to skill, however, as the game doesn't have a way to measure that as a metric- there's no ranking or rating or whatever.

 

This is one of your givens that is incorrect, despite being told as such by many players.

 

This only seems to function when people queue individually.

 

It applies a harsher logic to groups, actually, as you've also been told, wherein everyone in the group is queued as if they are the most experienced person in the group.

 

This is one of your givens that is incorrect, despite being told as such by many players.

 

However when people queue as a group together, all balance is lost.

 

This is also a given that is incorrect.

 

As has been explained- in this thread and other places- the GSF matchmaker isn't making many matches by skill in the first place. It is not bad at dealing with truly new players, but the difference between two experienced players can be really vast. The existing matchmaker isn't great at this, and it doesn't get appreciably worse than bad when you queue with groups. The matchmaker is pretty ok at taking two premades and splitting them on opposite sides- it doesn't do so 100% of the time, but it does do so much more than chance would dictate.

 

the fact remains that GSF becomes basically unplayable during the periods when groups of expert pilots queue together as a team

 

What you actually mean is "I can't win when I get placed against a premade, and I'm not willing to make my own, so please stop them from having fun".

 

My request of my fellow players is some consideration for the balance, and simply to please, if you notice after a couple of matches that you are clearly destroying the balance, to by all means keep queing and enjoying the game, but queue individually so that the game has a chance to balance the two teams.

 

Oh, that's it? Ok, then let me answer, for me personally:

 

No.

 

We're done here now, right?

 

The suggestion that was aimed at me, that I should just find a group of my own if I don't like it, doesn't seem realistic.

 

Does "invite to group" not work on your UI? Are you banned from all Discords? Why is it not realistic?

 

On the drop of a hat, at any random time when a group of 4 elite pilots happens to form a team and start queuing, I'm not suddenly going to be able to find an equal number of basically equally skilled pilots to form a second team.

 

Do you think this is what normally happens? You could form a group at a time you normally play, and then play with that group at that time. That's literally what every group in the game does, after all.

 

And of course, people do form groups sometimes, at the drop of a hat. There's GSF chat, there's Discord, and there's all the other mechanisms that the game allows for this. This then comes back to my earlier points which you seem to feel are "ad hominem"- you don't even do this. When beaten, you demand that groups be kicked out of the game.

 

So if there aren't more people who want to form a second team then instead of wrecking the game for everyone else you could split your current team of 4 , for example, into two teams of 2, still allowing a chance that the GSF teams can be balanced, and fun for everyone.

 

Nah, hard pass.

 

Until such time as our developers find a way to mitigate this imbalance through an internal mechanic, the best I can do is ask my fellow pilots to choose

 

"Until I can convince the devs to remove you by force, I will appeal to your better nature and my redefinition of the goals of the game, which I hope you will adhere to instead of playing to win."

 

What a compelling argument.

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Continuing the thread:

 

Dakhath's points are all solid as well. GSF is a team based combat game, with a matchmaker that only really tries to sort roughly by gear and experience. Choosing to get random teammates when this is a self-imposed restriction is ultimately on you.

 

As to the posts you are bringing over from the ea forums:

The details of how matchmaker could work are not a terrible idea, but you wouldn't need to arbitrarily assign points for this or for that. You could base the whole thing off of win percent and it would be a reasonably solid system, you could do rankings and it would be a lot better. I'm pretty sure the devs know all this, and maybe one day they will do something that counts more things. The devs already:

 

1)- Got rid of the never-intended 8 man premade

2)- Got rid of the high probability game that one team is entirely unupgraded and the other is not

3)- Counts premades as higher than the sum of their parts

 

If they added win percent as a metric for choosing teams, that would do a bunch more. If they actually added a stack ranking internally, that would do even more. I think matchmaker is not the smartest script in the land already, and most times we have seen it modified results in it not popping games with enough players on, etc. One day we may see further improvements.

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The suggestion that was aimed at me, that I should just find a group of my own if I don't like it, doesn't seem realistic. On the drop of a hat, at any random time when a group of 4 elite pilots happens to form a team and start queuing, I'm not suddenly going to be able to find an equal number of basically equally skilled pilots to form a second team. I don't have the metrics available that the game's internal mechanic has for sorting pilots according to skill level, and finding several top notch pilots at a moment's notice just because another group has formed, is often not going to be available.

 

This bugs me the most. You're not supposed to be able to find random people at the drop of the hat that can instantly go toe to toe against better teams.You're supposed to find like minded people who will put in the time & effort to cultivate each other until the group as a whole becomes the better team. In any team based PvP game your carefully selected team will absolutely come across a better one & get squashed. It takes a lot of time, effort, and passion as a team to improve as a whole before taking on better teams.

 

Rather than demand others not play the game as intended, here is an actionable plan you can implement on your own just by willing it:


  • Determine other pilots of merit. You can do this by looking at the end game score board. Perhaps take top few names down. Pick whoever on the opposing team you felt gave you the most trouble during the match. Or if you slaughtered the other team think about who did their best despite the situation.


  • Invite them to group. Plain and simple. Not everyone will accept. You have to be consistent and persevere.


  • Group with the same people regularly. Again you need to persevere until you find friends who will group consistently & regularly.

 

After that you & your merry band will begin the journey of getting good as a team. Your team will get squashed every now & then, but you have to pick each other up & press on. You will eventually learn how your team plays & each other's quirks. You will learn how to help each other shine the most. You will improve each other collaboratively.

 

In the wise words of a particular French purple mineral, why can't GSF-ers learn to do what every PvE-er in the game picks up easily?

 

If you refuse to do these simple steps, you need to be honest with yourself that team based PvP is not for you. No one is given a great team on a silver platter. You work hard together to polish what you have.

Edited by cheese_cake
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  • 2 months later...

I would like to first start off by thanking myrrhbear for having copied my posts to the GSF forums, in my hope that matchmaking and match types could be better optimized.

 

Please keep in mind that my suggestions are here for players to discuss, but my overall goal would be to have the devs implement.

 

MATCHMAKING

The matchmaking aspect for GSF could definitely be better optimized and I feel that Verain is on the right track.

 

Continuing the thread:

 

Dakhath's points are all solid as well. GSF is a team based combat game, with a matchmaker that only really tries to sort roughly by gear and experience. Choosing to get random teammates when this is a self-imposed restriction is ultimately on you.

 

As to the posts you are bringing over from the ea forums:

The details of how matchmaker could work are not a terrible idea, but you wouldn't need to arbitrarily assign points for this or for that. You could base the whole thing off of win percent and it would be a reasonably solid system, you could do rankings and it would be a lot better. I'm pretty sure the devs know all this, and maybe one day they will do something that counts more things. The devs already:

 

1)- Got rid of the never-intended 8 man premade

2)- Got rid of the high probability game that one team is entirely unupgraded and the other is not

3)- Counts premades as higher than the sum of their parts

 

If they added win percent as a metric for choosing teams, that would do a bunch more. If they actually added a stack ranking internally, that would do even more. I think matchmaker is not the smartest script in the land already, and most times we have seen it modified results in it not popping games with enough players on, etc. One day we may see further improvements.

 

 

If the devs could use better metrics to better balance the matches then I think that would help quite a bit. There really are quite a few stats that not only could, but should, be used at a per toon level to match players together. (This actually carries over to warzones too)

 

SCALING MATCHES

I've already mentioned this, but here it is again, which I think could help with the queue times and keep the overall match times more in balanced, based on the number of players in the matches.

 

SCALING MATCHES

 

There would be 3 different tiered timers for matches. This should make the matches take approximately the same amount of time, based on the number of players in each match, similar to a Warzone deathmatch.

 

Deathmatch

 

Currently a deathmatch has a maximum of 50 kills per team and a maximum of 10 minutes for the match.

 

My suggestion is as follows...

 

Teams with a maximum of 4 players would have a maximum of 16 kills per team to complete the match and the timer would be a maximum of 4 minutes.

 

Teams with a maximum of 8 players would have a maximum of 35 kills per team to complete the match and the timer would be a maximum of 8 minutes.

 

Teams with a maximum of 12 players would have a maximum of 50 kills per team to complete the match and the timer would be a maximum of 10 minutes.

 

Domination

 

Teams with a maximum of 4 players would need to reach a score of 350 points to win the match.

 

Teams with a maximum of 8 players would need to reach a score of 700 points to win the match.

 

Teams with a maximum of 12 players would need to reach a score of 1,000 points to win the match.

 

Rewards

 

The various mission rewards would be adjusted based on the maximum number of players in the match, in three tiers. Basically, a maximum team of 4 would receive around 1/3 of the current mission rewards.

 

 

I know that there has been various discussion about premade aspects.

For me personally, I am not able to use voice chat when I game since I have a family that is typically sleeping when I game and will easily hear. As a side note, I am just relieved that I'm currently a subscriber and can now pass on relying on GSF as a leveling tool for all of my new toons.

Ultimately, you cannot make players not do something as long as the game client allows it.

 

I am hopeful that the devs might actually have read something in this thread and think it would do some good if they could do something to improve upon what they've done in the past.

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If the devs could use better metrics to better balance the matches then I think that would help quite a bit.

 

I feel the if the devs used a second metric, to say nothing of actual plural metrics, that it would help quite a bit. Based on how it seems to lump players with a few hundred games in with players with a few thousand, while doing its best to treat actual fresh players differently, I think it's fair to say that the goal of the current system- helping actual fresh players be paired with strong teammates more often than chance would dictate- is kinda being achieved. The issue of course, is that no one who has ever complained on the forums, the GSF Discord, or reddit, is actually one of these fresh players. Having skulked around on alts an inordinate amount of time, the most common theme that I see is this: "Player or players stomp queue for hours, eventually find a premade that they have a thin chance of beating, complain about this fact".

 

I've said in other threads what I hope for matchmaker to eventually incorporate- win/loss (the only metric you cannot cheese in the winward direction), or a ranking solution, even if not strictly adhered to. The advantage of win/loss over every cheesable metric (k/d, damage, assists) is pretty obvious, and win/loss is already tracked. Ideally, however, you'd use something that takes into account who you won versus, as the various hidden matchmaking ratings across video gaming tend to do.

 

SCALING MATCHES

 

There's several large problems with scaling matches.

 

First, games have an amount of time that they "should" last. This is invariant on the number of players. A few years ago this was 15 to 20- currently it is more like 10-15. This isn't GSF-wide, or SWTOR-wide, or MMO-wide, it's industry wide. So in general, screwing with match length deliberately isn't acceptable. You could, in some of your sample cases, get the game to the correct time length by having one or two fire off, in the same way that some game modes split have team A attack and team B defend, then flip this around.

There's another more SWTOR-reason for not offering games that scale down so dramatically- when calculating how much reward per minute you get in an MMO, you have to count time-in-queue in some fashion, then the entire game itself as exclusive time (you can be doing story while sitting in queue, but you can't be doing story or picking flowers while in Kuat TDM). Any time-based things would need to have robust answers to this, such that a 4 minute game would be slightly less than one third as good as a 12 minute game. The problem is, this is not at all straightforward- some rewards are based on the win or the loss, such as daily and weekly quest completion and conquest objectives, others are based on medals acquired, and if players in a 4 minute match are scrambling for medals, well, that's a big issue. This idea doesn't strike me as intractable- merely very complex.

 

So, lets handwave all the reward stuff and pretend there's a good solution to the timed thing.

What do these scaled matches get people? What great victory is won for the community?

The only beneficial thing that I can see is the ability for matches to continue popping absolutely 24-7 on all servers. A game with only 8 players on it, versus the current minimum of 16, could likely be made more often- constantly even. This doesn't strike me as amazing, but it does strike me as pretty good- the game is healthy on most servers, but has issues on servers with crashed population, after all.

But the cost?

It requires intense development time. It requires serious balance issues, as 4 man teams result in serious meta shifting issues (ships that are fair in 8v8 can be totally useless or kinda OP in 4v4- the meta in 4v4 is smaller than 8v8 or 12v12). Domination requires special rules or it devolves into 1v1s (pure 1v1s, the game is absolutely not balanced around). TDM has less serious issues, but is still quite serious. If only one actually good pilot is on, he can swing a 12v12 on live, but it almost feels fair. He can swing an 8v8 much more reliably. A 4v4, a single good solo pilot will almost always result in a win for his team, and a loss for the other team. And of course, if it puts a premade 4 versus 4 solo queues, the match will be a massive stomp, more so than seen on live.

 

All that being said, I do think scaling matches could be done. I just think it would take developers monitoring and tuning for a smallish gain, and it strikes me as unlikely to be something that will happen- it's certainly not at the top of my wishlist.

 

For me personally, I am not able to use voice chat when I game since

If you can't use voice chat, you should lose more often than if you are able to use voice chat. Voice chat is helpful in any meaningful game based on teamwork and reactions, and if you can't use it for any reason, you lose more and win less than if you were able to use it.

 

One thing you might look into would be something where you could translate button presses into chatter in Discord, similar to how addons can help with callouts into /bg chat in WoW. You can't automate anything into chat in SWTOR /ops (that would be a TOS violation), but if some three button chord on your keyboard typed "two inc C" into Discord, I suspect that wouldn't mess with SWTOR's TOS, and might help you play in voice with people when your household is asleep. I'm not aware of such a product; it just seems likely to exist.

I've also played with a few people who whisper into voice over the years for precisely your reason; it's not at all unreasonable to folks on the other side of the voice chat, if that is your concern.

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TLDR.

 

I pretty much agree on everything you say, maybe except this sentence

The advantage of win/loss over every cheesable metric (k/d, damage, assists) is pretty obvious, and win/loss is already tracked.

Why do i think that win/loss is not the best metric? Lets look at myself as an example. I am awful very low-skilled pilot, or even worse, yet on some of my characters i do have pretty decent win/lose percentage because for a long time i was in a guild with some actual aces and great pilots and flew alot of matches in premade groups with them.

K/D ratio is much closer to reality, in my humble opinion.

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I pretty much agree on everything you say, maybe except this sentence

 

Why do i think that win/loss is not the best metric? Lets look at myself as an example. I am awful very low-skilled pilot, or even worse, yet on some of my characters i do have pretty decent win/lose percentage because for a long time i was in a guild with some actual aces and great pilots and flew alot of matches in premade groups with them.

K/D ratio is much closer to reality, in my humble opinion.

 

Win/loss is objectively better. Even in the circumstances you're outlining, that is a self-correcting problem. It doesn't give anyone an advantage for cheesing.

 

Meanwhile I've got a ship where I have a KDR of 63. That's not an exaggeration. I played it very conservatively. A more realistic look at my KDR puts it closer to 3.5 - 4 these days. Additionally, in domination I (and many of the best players) am(are) far more likely to just eat a death if it saves time. If that's the right call, it increases our chances of winning.

 

On the other side of things, it would be pretty easy to tank your MMR by self-destructing in dom more than you need to. You could still win even if you're doing that, so long as you only do it in domination. You can't cheese win/loss that way.

Edited by DakhathKilrathi
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First thing that would need a change though, is the bad habit of the matchmaker to try and form the highest number of people in a group (12).

How many times matches ended after 30 seconds, because there were 12 people in one group and 2-3 in the other, instead of forming an equal 6v6 or 8v8 group and put remaining players in other queues where they can be matched with other waiting people in smaller groups than frigging 12

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Currently a deathmatch has a maximum of 50 kills per team and a maximum of 10 minutes for the match.

 

Teams with a maximum of 4 players would need to reach a score of 350 points to win the match.

 

The current time limit is 13m 50s, not 10m. The average match for me lasts 9m 23s. I feel matches currently are a bit too short. As to your suggestion of 4vs4 Domination to 350 points, a team could win in less than 3 minutes. That's too short to try any strategy. Your numbers are not right. If you adjusted your numbers, I'm still not crazy about your general idea. The maps are big for 4vs4 or 6vs6 and you are going to have too much downtime with no action. Or say two players go down on the same team. Now it's 4vs2 and it could be very hard to recover from that. By the time the first two respawned, the other two could be overmatched and shot down, and the cycle continues.

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Win/loss is objectively better. Even in the circumstances you're outlining, that is a self-correcting problem. It doesn't give anyone an advantage for cheesing.

 

Meanwhile I've got a ship where I have a KDR of 63. That's not an exaggeration. I played it very conservatively. A more realistic look at my KDR puts it closer to 3.5 - 4 these days. Additionally, in domination I (and many of the best players) am(are) far more likely to just eat a death if it saves time. If that's the right call, it increases our chances of winning.

 

Kill rate (per match or per unit time) is surely a more useful metric than KDR. I suspect a lot of less good players than you have better KDR than your 3.5 - 4. Bomber aces will be misrepresented with either kill rate or KDR. Win rate is more representative for them.

 

I have an example of a deathmatch where one player had 24 kills, 2 assists, 10 deaths, 83000 damage, and another on the same team had 9 kills, 6 assists, 3 deaths, 54000 damage. KDR really isn't the best metric here.

 

Even if everybody solo-queues, I wonder if win rate is going to be a poor metric in the typical match.

- The ace pilot solo-carries and may have a win rate of 90% or more, and large sample size from thousands of matches

- The well above average pilot may have a win rate of 70%

- The slightly above average pilot may have a win rate of 60%

- The average pilot should have a win rate of 50%

These are useful and representative metrics.

 

On the other hand,

- The brand-new pilot has a win rate of undefined (or 0% in swtor-math)

- The 1-match pilot may have a win rate like 45%, and large sample size from many such players

- The well below average pilot may have a win rate like 46%

- The slightly below average pilot may have a win rate like 48%

 

I picked numbers like that, because in 8vs8 or 12vs12, an above average pilot makes a much bigger positive difference than a below average pilot makes a negative difference. So the problem is that most of the players in the typical match have the same win rate, within statistical noise. Kill rate should provide better resolution. Perhaps experience, kill rate and win rate should all be accounted at the same time, for best matchmaking results.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Win rate is better than any metric you have listed. For every player. Every player has the same objective: to win the game.

 

To improve on win rate, you need to consider who is winning and who is losing. This enters the realm of rankings, ELO style or otherwise. The game does have this in some pretty good manner for the ground game, but it doesn't seem to have a good internal metric like this for GSF. If they added this, it would be the best stat for matchmaking: it's the industry answer for match making, after all, across pretty much all games.

 

But without it, win/loss is your best, and it's not a question.

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  • 5 weeks later...
Speaking for myself now - not quoting for my friend:

2. Groups of highly ranked pilots queuing as a team is really game breaking. I am personally a quite strong pilot in GSF ending up consistently in the top 2 or 3 on most matches I'm in. However whenever a team of 3 or more strong pilots queue as a group it for all intents and purposes kills GSF until they get bored and quit queing for the night. A group of strong pilots queued as a team totally throws off any semblance of balance, and their team almost invariably will totally decimate the other team to the point to which many pilots will simply stop engaging during the match. After a couple of matches like that people simply stop queuing, since it's really no fun to play GSF at those time, so GSF is not available for anyone for a while until the elite group stops queing for the night. It's really a big problem, and comes up fairly frequently.

 

Very much this. Even the premades know it's true, that's why they're so defensive every time premade queue issues come up on this forum or in game. And why you were attacked just for daring to suggest they're part of the problem.

 

The simple reality is they make premades because they just want to stomp people. They have no interest in real games, no interest in competition, and very little interest in the overall health of GSF as a system.

 

I think two queues should exist:

 

1. Solo and Wingman: Max of two people queueing together. Two skilled pilots can still very much control the course of a game against weaker opposition, but at least this would minimize the premade queue stomping while still allowing you to play with a friend.

 

2. Premade: Groups of 3+, only queue against other premades.

 

None of this is to say premades are the only issue GSF has. Or even necessarily the biggest. But they are part of why most matches are horribly one-sided. And, unlike whatever black box formula Bioware uses, premades are relatively easy to solve.

Edited by sharpenedstick
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